1. Field of the Invention
The present disclosure relates generally to data processing and, in particular, to managing information about a product. Still more particularly, the present disclosure relates to a method and apparatus for locating messages of a product in documents.
2. Description of the Related Art
Currently, customers use many kinds of electronic products for different purposes. For example, an electronic product may be a portable computing device, a navigation system of a car, a personal computer, a server computer, and a component of a computing device. A component of a computing device may be hardware, software, and a combination of hardware and software. These electronic products output messages. The messages contain information of many kinds. For example, some messages provide information about the electronic product. For example, the information output by the electronic product may describe what the product is doing. Other messages describe problems that the product encounters. These electronic products may encounter a number of different kinds of problems.
When a problem occurs in an electronic product, the user of the electronic product may need to identify the cause of the problem. However, the messages output by the electronic product alone may not be sufficient for the user to identify the cause of the problem. For example, messages output by an electronic product may include a limited amount of information that does not sufficiently describe the problem.
Additionally, the user also may need to identify a solution for a particular problem an electronic product is having. However, the messages output by the electronic product by themselves may be insufficient to identify the solution to the particular problem. For example, the messages output by an electronic product may describe possible solutions, partial solutions, and solutions that are related to the particular problem. However, the messages may not provide sufficient information to identify a particular solution that correctly and fully resolves the particular problem.
The information provided in messages generated by the electronic products may vary. For example, an error message generated by an electronic product may provide a message identification number for an issue, a name of the electronic product that encountered the issue, a brief description of the issue, a brief description of a possible solution to the issue, and a name of an item the electronic product was processing when the issue occurred. As another example, another error message generated by an electronic product may include a message identification number and the name of the item the electronic product was processing when the issue occurred.
When the error message does not include a solution that resolves the issue, a user may perform a search to locate additional information for the message. In some cases, a solution to the issue may be in information retuned by the search. However, the search may provide the user with information that is not associated with the error message. For example, the name of the item in the error message may be a commonly used name. When a search for the error message includes a commonly used name, the search may provide the user with information associated with the commonly used name. This information associated with the commonly used name may not provide the user a solution to the issue. The number of results returned may be large enough that finding the solution may take much more time than desired for the user. When the number of results is large the user may miss the solution buried in the number of results.
Therefore, it would be desirable to have a method, apparatus, and computer program product that takes into account at least some of the issues discussed above.